Tucson Goodies, Part V: Koroit Opal

For 2014, I have several goals, designed to stretch both my metalworking skills and my gem-buying choices. It's no secret that I love the rare, the unusual, the sometimes fantastical gemstones...but often the rare, unusual, and fantastical is out of budget. In the past, I've compromised by buying smaller gems, more organically-shaped cuts (less skilled cutters often cut the gems into organic shapes, rather than perfectly balanced shapes and sharp corners, which are harder to do well, and thus cost more), and simply choosing not to purchase the gems that seemed completely out of reach.

I do choose what I consider to be the best of the gems that I can afford, considering size, shape, and quality. My loyal customers know that when you buy jewelry from me, the gems are the very best I can find. I've also been working nonstop on honing my metal skills so that I could do those gems justice..and now I want to stretch the type of gems I offer as well.

With this in mind, one of my splurge-y purchases this year was four (yes, just four) Koroit opals.

I wish I could get a better shot of these, so you could really see the color play of the opal. But these take a very high polish and that causes them to reflect the lighting terribly, so I get a lot of glare on my photos. But they're beautifully lit from with in with opal veining. **I did make a video of these beauties; unfortunately I am not tech savvy enough (yet) to upload it here. But it's posted in Instagram (I'm bluepiranha) and on Facebook.  :)

The stone above has a bit of opal veining at the top and more at the bottom. Koroit opal is a form of boulder opal, which, just like boulder turquoise, means that the opal is not completely cut out of the host stone. The interesting thing about Koroit opals ( from the Southwestern part of Queensland, Australia) is that the host rock (and thus the opal contained within) ends up forming these wonderfully wild and whimsical curly, curvy patterning. I bought these directly from the man who mines them, and he told me that Koroit is the only place where that kind of geological patterning takes place for opals, and no one knows why.

You can see a bit more of the color play throughout this stone. And trust me when I tell you that while these were a bit of a stretch for my budget, they were the miner's least expensive gems. Most were not stretch-able for me at this time, but I did spend a bit of time looking at his other offerings. They are like freakin' candy.

Here's a great example of an even more fabulous - and much pricier - Koroit opal:

source

See how much more color play, both throughout the stone, and in the opal striations, it has? And it's much more precisely cut than the organically shaped gems that I purchased.

I'm not ready for that yet...but a girl's got to start somewhere. And these opals are just one of many stepping stones (no pun intended) on my way to bigger, bolder, better. :)

Tucson Gem Show, Part IV: The Turquoise!

I learned my lesson last year, having randomly stumbled across one small booth selling beautiful examples of Royston turquoise. I bought a few, and sold all but one (thank you, my awesome customers!!). The response to them was phenomenal, which means that I get to buy more!

This year, I went straight to that same booth when the show opened, and I literally fought my way through the crowds to get some of these goodies. The booth was packed with other people who wanted the same thing I did, and getting your toes stepped on or your side elbowed is sometimes part of the gem buying experience. But trust me when I say it was totally worth it. :)

For those who don't know, Royston turquoise comes from Nevada. It's a lovely and prized type of turquoise with stunning color and matrix. But the type of Royston turquoise I REALLY love is known as boulder, or ribbon turquoise. The turquoise gem is not completely cut out of the host rock, or boulder (hence, boulder turquoise), and the lovely blue color winds through the boulder, often resembling a ribbon. Like these:

they give a flash of the blue, contained within a lovely golden brown host rock (sometimes the host rock is a bit paler, as in the center earring pair shown above). Unusual, lovely, and yes...a bit spendy. But sooo worth it. 

These are all earring pairs. I didn't have as much luck finding pendant gemstones this year, but I did stock up on earring stones as much as I could. That doesn't mean that I have a lot, because these aren't easy to find - I only saw Royston / boulder turquoise at two gem vendors this year - but I grabbed what I could.

Of course, I didn't forgo pendant-sized gems entirely:

These all have the lighter host rock, but will still make lovely pendants. The upside-down teardrop shape is one of my favorites to work with.

I also found these three ovals, and....

this bad boy. It's BIG. And beautiful. And it's going to make a stunning pendant. :) 

But let me share my OTHER great find:

Natural Kingman turquoise, from Arizona. One of my favorites of the American turquoises. The Kimgman mine is still in operation, but only for copper mining; turquoise is no longer mined there. So any Kingman gems that come on the market are from old stock, in limited amounts. They're also often not in my budget. But this year, the stars aligned and I found a few that I had to bring home. Just look at those two beauties! The coloring and matrix remind me of some of the prettiest Peruvian opals that I've shared with you....only these are even better in some ways. :) 

And for the first time ever, I found earring pairs!

Just a sampling of the 12 pairs I found. All different, all stunning. And all American.  :)

I have one more unusual gem to share with you. And then it's time to get on to turning these gorgeous goodies into jewelry! 

Tucson Goodies, Part III: Peruvian Opals

Certain gems I just love in almost any incarnation. Peruvian opals fall into that category. I love them when they're a pure, sky blue, when they're slightly translucent with inclusions, and when they've got flashes of blue intermixed with brown "host rock" that makes them look like landscapes.

They're not an inexpensive stone - blue Peruvian opal is found in just one place: the Andes Mountains, in Peru. Like most relatively rare stones, it commands a relatively big price. And sometimes, as with most varied-color stones, you lose some of the patterns in smaller cuts. So this year I went a little bigger in my selections:

This is an example of a Peruvian with that great, sky-blue coloring. You can see bits of the host rock embedded within the blue color, but it certainly doesn't detract from such a beautiful cabochon. The length of this gem is about 1 3/4 inches - definitely a statement gem.

This is a great example of a more translucent opal. The soft hue combined with tan and a bit of black are lovely together.

These gems are some of my favorites - the "land and sea" stones. Great color, interesting detail, landscape-like variation.

And finally, the Mother of all opals:

It measures just under 2" long and is over 1/2" wide. I love the unusual cut and the landscape detail. It will be a bit more of a challenge to bezel (making larger bezels in general is harder than smaller bezels, plus it has two sharp corners which will be more difficult to set), but I'm very much looking forward to designing for this stone!